by Ivy Layne
I went after her attacker. I was on him, had a grip on his neck with one hand, when I heard her scream.
If it had been a job, I might've handled it differently. But Charlie wasn't a job. I called her name. No answer. Her attacker struggled beneath me, grunting and kicking. I called Charlie's name again. Still no answer.
"Goddammit," I'd shouted, pissed at the asshole trying to get away and at Charlie for disappearing. I didn't have any restraints in my tux, no way to secure the attacker and still go after Charlie.
"Goddammit," I repeated under my breath.
I should have been calm. Deliberate. Calculating.
An hour before, I'd been at a benefit ball in a Buckhead mansion, had made small talk, disappeared, disabled the security system, hacked into the owner's computer, downloaded his protected files, and strolled out.
My heart rate had never risen above normal. Now, it raced in my chest.
I let go of the attacker and surged to my feet, striding across the yard to where I'd seen Charlie go down. I almost tripped in a hole in the grass when I saw her white shirt.
All white. No blood. That was a good sign.
She said my name, her voice weak and shaking. I needed to get her in the house and figure out how badly she was injured.
I got her inside, cleared the house, and went to work on her face. At the sight of her smooth skin scraped raw, I wanted to find the asshole who'd jumped her and beat the shit out of him.
Why the fuck would someone be after Charlie?
Her eyes cleared gradually, shock from the attack wearing off as she took in the sight of me in my tux.
At the look on her face, I wanted to strip her naked and take her to bed, but that would have to wait till later.
"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked.
I thought about messing with her, telling her I'd been at the party for fun, but I found myself saying, "I had a job."
"What kind of job?"
"Maître d’?" I said, unable to resist teasing her just a little.
She didn't buy it, raising one eyebrow and waiting patiently for the truth. I shrugged one shoulder.
"A confidential kind of job."
"A confidential job for a client who required you to wear a tux?" she probed.
"Exactly. Almost all of my work is confidential," I said.
"You sound like the Sinclairs," she said. "They never tell any of the good stuff."
"Same line of work, but I freelance. Still, same principles. You don't get a lot of repeat clients if you talk about the job."
"I get that. Is it dangerous?"
"Sometimes. Tonight, not as dangerous as your walk home."
"I guess not."
Keeping my voice carefully neutral, I asked, "Any idea who it was?"
"I don't know for sure," she said slowly. "I couldn't see them in the dark. But there's been some stuff going on . . ."
She trailed off, either not sure how to explain or uncertain if she wanted to.
Tough luck. I wanted answers and I was going to get them.
"What kind of stuff?" I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder—the one she hadn't landed on—and said, "Well, for the last few months, some nut bag has been sending pictures of my aunt and uncle's deaths to different people in the family. Not to me . . . yet."
"Anyone attacked? Anything direct, like this? Or just leaving pictures?"
"Just pictures," she said. "So far, only for Jacob and Vance."
"Anything else?" I asked.
"A former client of Winters Inc. threatened me a few weeks ago," she admitted, squeezing her eyes shut as I went to work on the raw spot at her temple.
"Sorry," I said, hating that I was hurting her. "You got dirt in here."
"It's okay," she whispered. "Thank you."
I ignored her thanks and said, "What kind of threats?"
"Nothing specific," she said. "I was responsible for reporting his company to the FBI for fraud and he was pretty pissed off about it."
"Is that why Aiden fired you?"
"He says not. But I don't know. Maybe he thought if he fired me, Hayward would think I'd been punished."
"Could this have been him? Hayward?" I asked, lowering the washcloth.
"It could," she said. "It was dark and it happened so fast. I didn't really see him after I hit the ground, and then you were there . . ."
"If this guy is after you, what the fuck are you doing living in this house by yourself with no security? You barely even have working locks, for Christ's sake."
I tossed the washcloth on the floor and glared at her. She looked away for a second before her spine stiffened and she glared back.
Why did I like it so much when she went head to head with me? I should have been annoyed. Instead, I didn't know if I wanted to kiss her or keep arguing with her.
"I do have locks on the doors," she said. "And I didn't know anyone was after me. A few weeks ago, Hayward said he was going to 'get me'. But he's been busy with the FBI and he hasn't done anything. He hasn't called. He hasn't come by. Nothing. We don't even know that this was him."
"Is there anyone else who might want to attack you in the dark?" I demanded.
"No, of course not. I don't know what's going on, okay? Maybe it was Hayward, maybe not. I don't know."
I was too pissed at her to respond. Some guy was threatening her and she thought the best response was to move out of her fortress of a home into this completely unsecured, barely habitable house?
Life is dangerous enough without throwing yourself in the path of trouble. What would've happened to her if I hadn't been there?
I didn't want to think about it.
Didn't want to consider what her attacker's plan had been. She was lucky the worst of it was a scraped cheek, some missing hair, and a handful of bruises.
Charlie might not be so lucky the next time.
"You realize we have to call the police," I said, waiting for her to argue. She didn't disappoint.
"We can't call the police." Her jaw set, she crossed her arms tightly over her chest.
"Why the fuck not?" I demanded.
"Because it would be all over the news in about five seconds," she said. "I'm not doing that. I'm not going to be their bug under a microscope. Nothing happened. I'm fine. I'm getting a security system tomorrow, and everything will be all right."
"You're deluded," I said, facing her down. "For one thing, if it is this guy who threatened you, he'll come back for more. You need to establish a pattern of attacks at the beginning so you can press charges and we can make it stick when we catch the guy."
"No."
She wouldn't meet my eyes. Probably because I was glaring at her and she knew I was right.
"What if I can promise you it won't get out?" I asked.
"You can't promise me that, Lucas," she said, sounding exhausted.
Charlie was being obstinate, but she wasn't wrong. At least not about the press. If we called 911, the press would be all over her and the attention would be relentless.
She might be pretending she was a normal girl with a normal life, but she wasn't. She was Charlotte Winters, the crown princess of the Winters clan.
Her departure from Winters Inc. hadn't hit the news yet, but it would, eventually.
Even sooner if the attack got out.
It was too juicy a story, and we both knew the media would gnaw on it for weeks.
She wouldn't be able to walk down the street.
She wouldn't be able to leave her house.
She'd have to move home, a prisoner in Winters House, until the attention died down.
"I promise you it'll be quiet. Will you trust me?"
"Are you going to call my brother? Or one of the Sinclairs?" she asked, not trying to hide the hope in her voice.
"No. I'm going to call a detective I've worked with on another case. He can keep his mouth shut, and he'll take your statement and get the attack on record, but do it under the radar."
"And he won
't call my brother?"
Charlie stared me down, raising an eyebrow. I might've thought she was being paranoid, but I knew how these things worked.
Aiden Winters had his finger on the pulse of Atlanta, at almost every level. There was no cop in town who would process a police report involving Charlotte Winters and not call Aiden.
Except, possibly, Detective Ryan Brennan.
"Brennan won't rat you out," I promised, "but we'll have to tell Sinclair Security before they put in your system."
Charlie opened her mouth to speak, but I raised a finger and pointed it at her face. Her eyes narrowed. I didn't care.
I was done arguing about this.
"Charlie, they have to know what kind of threat you're under so they can design the system to handle it. I know why you want to hide this from the press, but you can't hide this from your security team. It's idiotic. Do you have any idea what could've happened to you if I hadn't been sitting in my driveway when you got jumped?"
Charlotte's eyes went dark and she looked away.
Shit.
I didn't want her to start shaking again. I needed to get some food in her, and maybe a beer, before Brennan showed up.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I flipped it open and dialed. Brennan answered on the second ring.
"Jackson. What is it?"
"I have a situation. I have a friend who needs to make a police report, but it has to stay quiet. She can't come into the precinct and she can't have a black-and-white in her driveway. Completely under the radar."
There was a long silence.
"Are you going to tell me who we’re talking about?" Brennan asked carefully.
I gave him Charlie's address in answer.
"Be there in ten," he said.
That was why I liked working with Brennan. He was always calm, collected, and on the ball. I shoved my phone back in my pocket and glanced at Charlie, now leaning against the wall of her kitchen, hands hanging loose at her sides, staring at the floor.
She looked beat to shit and so tired she could pass out right where she was. She couldn't go to sleep, not until she talked to Brennan, but a little food would steady her.
Grabbing her bag of take-out, I opened the container inside. Her burger was all over the place, avocado and onion strings and melted cheese mixed in with her fries. It looked a hell of a lot better than the dry chicken and finger food I'd had at the party. I did my best to reassemble it and handed the box to her.
"If you don't want furniture, you need to at least get some folding chairs and a table. For now, sit down on your futon and eat."
"Bossy," she said under her breath as she took the container and turned her back on me to walk down the hall to her makeshift bedroom.
I didn't give a shit if she thought I was bossy. Charlotte Winters needed to get her fucking head on straight. She wasn't going to like it, but she was going to goddamn listen to me.
I waited until she was settled on her futon and had a mouthful of food before I laid down the law.
"You need looking after," I said. As expected, her blue eyes flared with aggravation. It shouldn't have turned me on.
Since when did I like argumentative women?
Since never.
Charlie started chewing faster so she could swallow and start yelling at me.
I pointed a finger at her and said, "Can it. I know you're a smart, responsible, adult woman. Do you have any self-defense training?"
I could tell she was surprised by the question. Her reluctance was so obvious I had to fight a grin. She shook her head 'no'.
"Can you handle a gun?"
Another reluctant shake of her head.
"Do you have any of the skills you need to defend yourself if you're attacked or spot someone following you?"
This time, she didn't bother to shake her head, just gritted her teeth and swallowed, getting ready to argue back.
"You need looking after," I repeated.
Charlie took a huge bite of her burger and began to chew, her mutinous glare adorable.
"Does Sinclair have you on the schedule for your security system?"
She nodded.
"Tell me it's tomorrow."
Another nod.
That was something. They’d put in a solid system, and if they missed anything, I could upgrade it.
"Tell them you need a panic button. I could get you one, but I don't do a lot of personal security and I don't think I have any in stock. Sinclair will have them."
She swallowed her burger and asked, "What's a panic button?"
"It's a device you keep on you at all times. If anything happens, you hit it and it alerts your security team, and the police, that you need help immediately. I'll have them wire it to my phone, too, since I'm right next door. I can get here faster than they can."
"That sounds like a good idea," she said.
"Charlie, you need to be careful. That wasn't a mugger. A mugger would've knocked you down and taken off with your purse. Whoever that was, they wanted to hurt you. That's a hell of a lot more dangerous than someone who's out to steal something. Hopefully, it's this Hayward guy."
"Why are you hoping it's Hayward?" she asked.
"Because we know he's a threat. This crackpot who's targeting your family is a complete unknown. I take it the Sinclairs have been trying to track down the source of the pictures?"
"Yeah. Since Jacob got the first one a few months ago. They haven't found anything. No fingerprints, and they said that whoever dropped the pictures off seems to know where the security cameras are, at least the cameras in Jacob's building, because we have them on video but they couldn't identify who it was. We don't even know if it's a man or a woman."
"There's no one you can think of with a grudge against your family?" I asked, not surprised when Charlie rolled her eyes at me.
It was a loaded question when talking about the Winters family.
"No one specific I can think of," she said. "But between people who have a problem with Winters Inc. and the way my cousins and brothers have slept their way through the state of Georgia, you could probably put together a very long list of people who don't like us."
"True. But sending pictures of the crime scenes is unusual. That's going back decades. Both cases are closed. Why bring them up now?"
"To mess with us?" Charlie asked. "I can't think of another reason."
I turned the problem over in my mind. I doubted it was about money. Normally, when a wealthy family was targeted like this, money would be my first thought.
But there was no blackmail here. Crime scene photos of the deaths weren't a secret. Someone who wanted money would be better off getting pictures of an affair or the company doing something underhanded.
The only reason I could think of to send the crime scene pictures was to cause emotional upset. Someone wanted to scare them or hurt them.
"We've been hoping they'd make a mistake," Charlie said, "but so far, we haven't gotten another picture since Vance's. Maybe they gave up."
"Maybe. And there's no one other than Hayward who might have a grudge against you? An ex-boyfriend? One of those fiancés you didn't marry?"
Charlie's eyes flew wide. "How did you know about them?"
"You're a Winters," I reminded her. "It's common knowledge that you've been engaged four times and dumped all of them. Are you sure one of those guys isn't out for revenge?"
"Pretty sure." Charlie took another bite of her burger and studied the takeout container on her lap, rearranging what was left of her French fries as she chewed.
Pink flags of color stood out on her cheeks. She was embarrassed. I was curious.
"Really? Getting dumped by his fiancée is one of those things that can push a guy over the edge."
"Not these guys," she said after she swallowed. "Maybe if I'd messed with their golf clubs."
She shrugged one shoulder and took another bite.
"What does that mean?" I pushed.
I should've let it go, but someone had
attacked her and it had been personal. A discarded lover was at the top of the list in this kind of crime.
I wanted to know why she was so sure not a single one of her four fiancés would be hurt or angry enough to come after her.
There was no future for me and Charlie, no engagement waiting around the corner, no white wedding followed by the pitter-patter of little feet.
We were the world's worst fit, but I knew if I'd been in love with a woman like her, if I'd had that face and that body and that attitude, and it was all mine and then she walked away . . . I could imagine that kind of loss breaking a man.
"So?"
"None of them loved me, okay?"
Charlie put the takeout container on the floor and pulled her feet up on the futon, propping her chin on her knees and wrapping her arms around her shins. Sitting like that, she looked about sixteen.
"Every single one wanted to marry me because I'm a Winters. None of them wanted me. With the first two, it took me a while to catch on.
"Number one was cheating, which was a pretty good giveaway. Number two kept asking me to spend money on him. Number three interrupted his proposal to take a phone call from a client. And I was never really engaged to number four. He just told everyone we were engaged."
"Why would he do that? He had to know you wouldn't go along with it."
"He did. But he was trying to impress a prospective employer. We'd been dating, so people knew we were together, and by the time I spread the word that we'd broken up, he had the job so it didn't matter."
"That sucks," I said.
It did. I'd assumed Charlie would be a target because she was gorgeous and sexy. How would it feel to realize the person you thought you'd spend your life with was only interested in your family and your bank account?
She deserved better than that. I was unreasonably grateful that she hadn't married any of those assholes.
"Yeah. It wasn't fun. So you know you can believe me when I tell you I don't want a relationship. I'm kind of burned out on the whole Where is this going? Let's get married. thing. I'm tired of trying and being let down. I'd rather be on my own. I watched Aiden with Elizabeth for years. I always swore I'd never get married if I wasn't really in love, and then—"
Charlie let out a long sigh.
"You didn't love the guys you got engaged to?"